Charles Peirce's Guess at the Riddle

Grounds for Human Significance

John K. Sheriff

Publication Year: 1994

"Sheriff's text moves the "guess" to a new level of
understanding, while integrating much of Peirce's philosophy, and provokes many
questions." -- Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy
Newletter

"The purpose of Sheriff's work is to expound
Peirce's unified theory of the universe -- from cosmology to semiotic -- and to
discuss its ramifications for how we should live. He concludes that Peirce has given
us a theory we can live with. The book makes an important contribution to philosophy
of life and to the humanities in general." -- Nathan
Houser

"In clear and concise prose, Sheriff describes
Peirce's 'theory of everything,' a vision of cosmic and human meaning that offers a
positive alternative to popular pessimistic and relativistic approaches to life and
meaning." -- Peirce Project Newsletter

Cover

Contents

Foreword

Charles Sanders Peirce is now recognized the world over as
a great philosopher in the classic sense, but his greatness is
often attributed to his technical achievements and his speculative
subtlety and breadth. Now John Sheriff gives us another
Peirce: a visionary, a wise man, a seer. ...

Preface

The human predicament, the situation of human intelligence,
the conditions of our use of signs as Charles S. Peirce
perceived them are as follows: truth is in the future, but in
our consciousness we cannot help but assent to what we perceive
to be the case in the particular contexts and language
games within which we live. ...

Acknowledgments

While this work was in progress, I drew material from the
Preface, chapter I, and chapter 2 for a short paper entitled
"A Preface to Peirce's Guess at the Riddle," which was presented
at the 1992 meeting of the Semiotic Society of America
and will appear in Semiotics 1992, ...

1. Peirce's Cosmogonic Philosophy

Peirce was familiar with the biblical account of creation,
with cosmological theories from the time of Democritus to
his own day, and with the evolutionary theories of Charles
Darwin, Chevalier de Lamarck, and Clarence King. Peirce's
cosmogony was indebted to these theories, yet he did not
fully agree with any of them. ...

2. Mind

In spite of all the work being done in linguistics, psychology,
and biology, mental phenomena are still today very
mysterious, and there is no general theory of mind that explains
them satisfactorily. Therefore, the extensive theory of
mind Peirce arrived at nearly a hundred years ago is particularly
interesting. ...

3. Signs

In the foregoing account of Peirce's evolutionary cosmology,
which hypothetically begins with nothing and arrives
at thought, a subtle transition occurs somewhere along the
way. We started describing Firstness (feeling of quality,
chance, particularity) and ended by saying all thought is
Thirdness (rule controlled, generality). ...

4. Belief, Reality, and Truth

In the previous chapter we showed some of what is behind
Peirce's assertion that for logical thought to be possible, the
mind must have three elements: first, ideas, or thoughts;
second, general rules according to which one idea determines
another, or the habitual connection between thoughts; and
third, processes establishing habitual connection between
thoughts (7.348, 355, 358). ...

5. Esthetics, Ethics, and Logic

The preceding chapters have clarified the human predicament
described in the introduction to this book: truth is in
the future,l but in our consciousness we cannot help but assent
to what we perceive to be the case within the particular
contexts and language games within which we live. Likewise,
at every moment that we perceive beauty and goodness ...

6. Philosophical Sentimentalism

It is abundantly clear that the persons whom Peirce most
respected were the true scientists, theoretical reasoners, and
metaphysicians. Theory and practice are two masters that
such persons cannot serve, for when human desires intervene,
the "perfect balance of attention which is requisite for
observing the system of things is utterly lost" (1.642). ...

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